costra

Forms

costra f (plural costras)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish costra, inherited from Latin crusta (“crust, rind, shell”).^[2][3][4][1] The /r/ moved from the first syllable to the second;^[2][1] Corominas notes that this metathesis happened only in Castilian.^[2][1]

The Latin word survives in every Romance language except Romanian and Sardinian: Portuguese crosta, Catalan crosta, Occitan crosta, French croûte and Italian crosta.^[2][5] The diminutive crostata passed through French into English as custard.^[5]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *krusto- (“hardened”) and Proto-Indo-European *krus-to- (“crushed, pounded”), comparing κρούω (kroúō, “to strike”) and Lithuanian krušti (“to crush”).^[6] Wiktionary derives it instead from *krustós (“hardened”), from a root meaning “to form a crust, begin to freeze”, and compares κρύος (krúos, “frost”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250) has the word twice: for the scab a burning stone makes on the flesh (quema la carne sobre que la ponen & faz la costra “it burns the flesh it is put on and makes a scab”), and for the outer layer of emeralds.^[7][8] Corominas's first record is the Alfonsine translation of Lucan.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The medical sense came first in the record: the Lapidario, the General Estoria (the plagues of Egypt) and the falconry and horse treatises of the 13th century use it for a scab.^[8][7] Nebrija glossed it with Latin crusta, “like a bark”, and Covarrubias defined it as whatever covers a thing like a bark.^[9][10]

The Diccionario de Autoridades added the hard surface of a jar of preserves, the ration of ship's biscuit given to galley crews and the costra de azúcar that stuck to the cauldron in sugar mills.^[11] Corominas thinks the biscuit sense, recorded in 1646, may come from Catalan, which kept the Latin meaning “bread crust”.^[2] In Costa Rica the word names toasted rice stuck to the pot.^[4] The ship's biscuit lives on in Lanzarote, where a costra is half a loaf baked into biscuit, and in Colombia the word names toasted sugared bread.^[12][13]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – first record, in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[7][8]
• c. 1275 – the Libro de los caballos, the earliest record in a contemporary manuscript.^[7]
• before 1455 – the Tostado uses it of the surface of the earth.^[2][11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records it with the derivative encostrar.^[9][3]
• 1512 – first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[14]
• 1646 – the Estebanillo González has the ship's-biscuit sense.^[2][11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds costra láctea, a medical name for usagre, an eruption of infants.^[15][15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A hard outer crust or layer that forms on something wet or soft: una costra de barro en las botas.^[4][1]
2. A scab, the hard layer that forms on a sore or spot as it dries.^[4][1][16]
3. (historical) A slice or piece of ship's biscuit given to galley crews as rations.^[4][11]
4. The melted wax that runs down a candle (moco).^[4]
5. (Costa Rica) Toasted rice stuck to the bottom of the pot (corroncha).^[4]

Word family

• costroso
• encostrar
• costrada

Related words

• incrustar
• crustáceo
• Latin crusta
• Italian crosta

Usage notes

Costra láctea is a medical name for the eruption of infants' scalps also called usagre.^[4][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 223
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. costra
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. costra
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2345
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. costra
8. ^ a b c Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. costra
9. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 320
10. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 527
11. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 643
12. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. costra
13. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 264
14. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. costra
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 302
16. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. costra